Sony Mobile Jelly Bean Rolls Out In Early 2013, Angers Budget Users

Sony Mobile has gone on record about their Android 4.1 Jelly Bean ambitions and has angered part of their community in the process. Come early 2013, between February and March, Sony Mobile will bring Jelly Bean to the Xperia T, Xperia TX, and Xperia V. In late March, Sony will then target Xperia P, Xperia J, and Xperia go smartphone owners and finish their roll out by upgrading Xperia S, Xperia SL, Xperia ion and Xperia acro S in the weeks after. If you don’t see your Sony phone listed, its not due to an error on our end but that Sony will not be upgrading them. More on that, after the jump.

Sony has made the case that the Xperia U, Xperia miro, Xperia tipo, and Xperia sola will not move beyond Android 4.0 to ensure performance over added features. Anthony from the Sony Mobile Blog said:

The quality of Xperia’s software experience is dependent on a number of factors including: screen resolution, hardware platform and RAM. In the case of Xperia go, this combination came together in a way that meant the user experience running JB was not adversely affected.

Unfortunately, in the case of Xperia tipo, Xperia miro , Xperia U, and Xperia sola this wasn’t the case – so we made the decision to keep them on Ice Cream Sandwich.

This of course has angered many in the Sony Mobile community who own one of the none upgradable devices which are considered budget Android phones. Still, the decision is not an easy one for Sony to make. While some argue that they should be given the option to upgrade to Jelly Bean, the problem lies that with an open option to all, many might make the upgrade without knowning the full sideeffects. In this case, Sony has sided with performance over new features for the Xperia U, Xperia miro, Xperia tipo, and Xperia sola. In recent months, Sony Mobile has made great strides and even became the worlds third largest smartphone maker while become the number 2 Android provider in the UK.